Peter Frost's anthropology blog, with special reference to sexual selection and the evolution of skin, hair, and eye pigmentation

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Electing a new people?

Immigrants in the port of Patras, Greece (source). An immigrant
community as large as three million people, in a country of eleven million.

It was during the early 1970s—the time of the Colonels—that Greece began
to receive large numbers of immigrants, mainly Africans recruited for insecure
low-paying jobs in construction, agriculture, and shipping.In 1972, they numbered 15,000 to 20,000
officially and 60,000 unofficially (Pteroudis, 1996, p. 163).

The same years also saw the start of a related trend: loss of employment
in manufacturing. These jobs were relocated to countries with cheaper labor and
less stringent work regulations. But other jobs could not be relocated by their
very nature—jobs in tourism, construction, agriculture, and shipping. It was in
these same sectors that employers began to import low-wage labor:

[…] the
economic crisis that hit Greece beginning in the mid-1970s led to a process of
deindustrialization. But not all sectors of industry were affected in the same
way. The more traditional labor-intensive sectors that served the domestic
market were less penalized than the more modern sectors that were open to
foreign competition. The traditional sectors that held up were also those in
which the possibility of using foreign labor was greater (Pteroudis, 1996, p.
164).

When one employer began to hire lower-priced foreign labor, usually
without authorization, pressure grew on others to follow suit. By the
mid-1990s, foreigners made up 10% of all workers and even more of the
“informal” labor force:

More generally, the development of the parallel
economy was linked to clandestine immigration. Other than tourism and
agriculture, the underground economy assumed considerable proportions in the
sectors of construction, industry, and trade. The parallel economy contributed
in the early 1990s to 30-35% of Greece’s GIP […]. For some authors it was the
development of the size of the parallel economy that attracted the clandestine
immigrants […], whereas for others the use of clandestine labor supported the
informal economy (Pteroudis, 1996, p. 164).

Not all of the non-European Community
foreigners present in Greece were clandestine workers. In some sectors they
coexisted with documented workers. This was for example the case with the
merchant marine. As early as the late 1970s, this strategic sector of the
national economy resorted massively to foreign labor, especially in low-skilled
jobs. In 1990, there were around 10,000 foreign sailors out of a total of
37,000 people employed on Greek ships. But according to other sources,
alongside the documented workers, the merchant marine was employing 12,000 to
14,000 workers from Egypt and Pakistan and 30,000 clandestine foreigners.
(Pteroudis, 1996, p. 165)

According to a review of the
literature in the early 2000s, this immigration was slowing down the rise in
incomes of poorer Greeks:

[…] the wages of Greek workers have not been reduced during the period
of immigration (since 1990) but the rate of increase is much lower, in real
terms, than in the past. It is interesting to note that the money wages of
workers paid with minimum wages have increased at very low rates, between 1% -
2% per year, whereas wages in general have increased by higher rates. The
difference between the increases of the two wage rates may be attributed to the
fact that those working with minimum wages are unskilled workers without work
experiences and therefore these are the people who, in general, are in
competition with immigrants in the labour market. (Lianos, 2004, p. 11)

Nonetheless,
little has been done to restrain the influx of low-wage workers. In fact, it
has actually increased. Why?

Several
reasons may be given:

Costs and benefits fall on different people

A
big reason is that the adverse impacts fall on those people (the working poor)
who have the least input into public policy.

[…] immigration is increasing the inequality of income among various
categories of income and profit recipients. A general equilibrium study […] has
found that immigration to Greece has indeed this effect. It has reduced real
disposable incomes of poor households and has increased the incomes of middle
and rich households. (Lianos, 2004, p. 13)

The
latter households, who benefit from immigration, have the most input into
public policy:

It is interesting to mention that many economists in Greece see
immigration as an important factor in keeping wages low, thus keeping the cost
of production low and therefore the rate of inflation in a period when Greece
was making a serious effort to join the economic and monetary union (EMU). One
can go one step further and argue that the policy of low inflation was served
by immigration and perhaps even better by illegal immigration. Thus, the lack
of haste on the part of the Greek governments to regularise illegal immigrants
is attributed to a conscious policy rather than to a lack of administrative
ability. (Lianos, 2004, p. 11)

Besides influencing public policy
directly, the elites also exert an indirect influence via the media, the arts,
and entertainment. This influence builds on an existing tendency among artists,
entertainers, and writers toward individualism and post-nationalism.

Post-nationalism

In Greece, post-nationalism has
replaced nationalism since the Colonels left in 1974 and even more so since the
country entered the European Community in 1981. The increasingly prevalent view
is that the nation-state no longer matters and that there are only individuals
buying and selling in a global marketplace

Post-nationalists are aware that
many immigrants see things differently. But this fact is usually blamed on the
host society; if the Greek people would just be more welcoming, fewer
immigrants would seek refuge in their own cultural and religious identities.

Such refuge is even seen positively as an understandable response to the challenges of an alien society. Post-nationalism has thus become wedded to multiculturalism.

Belief in unrestrained markets

There has also been a growing belief
in the virtue of unrestrained free markets, especially among government
officials:

“I am enthusiastic about the Albanians. They
certainly work illegally, but that is a prerequisite to their being able to
offer their labor at a low price,” declared the minister of the economy in 1993
[…]. The usefulness of this very flexible labor is to maintain the
competitiveness of certain branches of work […] It is estimated that the cost
of clandestine labor is 50% less than that of documented labor (Pteroudis,
1996, p. 177-178)

Collapse
of the Eastern bloc

Finally, external circumstances have
greatly increased the pressure of immigration, both legal and illegal. One set
of circumstances was the end of the Cold War and the collapse of regimes
throughout Eastern Europe:

But the increase in the volume of
clandestine immigration is to be understood above all as a consequence of the
opening of the countries of Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Until 1989 there
were practically no citizens from the Eastern bloc in Greece. Only a few
thousand Poles had requested asylum […]. But the collapse of the communist
regimes and the opening of the borders fundamentally changed migration between
the East and the West of the continent (Pteroudis, 1996, p. 165-166)

The 1990s brought hundreds of
thousands from the former Eastern bloc. They were difficult to keep out because
of the long land border and also because many were entitled to Greek
nationality by virtue of having Greek ancestry (i.e., jus sanguinis, as
in Israel and Germany). These “ethnic Greeks” usually had only a vague
connection to their ancestral homeland. While studying in Voronezh, I worked at
a language school where one of our students was preparing to “return” to
Greece. He had in fact only a limited understanding of Greek.

These legal immigrants thus created
a cosmopolitan environment that could support and conceal illegal immigrants
from the former Eastern bloc and, increasingly, from elsewhere.

A Third World baby boom comes of age

Another external circumstance has
been a baby boom in a zone stretching from West Africa and the Sahel, through
the Horn of Africa and parts of the Middle East, and into South Asia. This boom
is fueled by three interacting causes: traditionally high fertility, modern
medicine, and relative peace. As these children come of age, most have nowhere
to go but out. And “out” is increasingly Europe.

Initially, they went to the
countries of their former colonial masters, usually Great Britain or France.
This flow of people was seen as “chickens coming home to roost”—payback for the
sins of colonialism and imperialism. In the 21st century, however, the chickens
are also flocking to other homes. Something else is going on, and it isn’t
payback.

How many?

In the mid-1990s, Pteroudis (1996,
pp. 174-176) cited Greek estimates that ranged from a low of 180,000 illegal
immigrants to a high of 1 million. The number of legal immigrants was likewise
uncertain. The 1991 census gave a total of 167,000 whereas other sources
pointed to a much higher figure.

Today, estimates range from a low of
one million foreign-born to a high of three million. That’s a lot for a country
of eleven million people. The low figure is extrapolated from the 2001 census:

[…] the number of immigrants living in Greece in 2001 was 762,191,
making up approximately 7 percent of the total population. This figure includes
all foreign born irrespective of immigration status, as well as the 46,869
individuals who were citizens of the countries comprising the European Union at
that time.

[…] Nevertheless, the actual size of the foreign-born
population is estimated to be significantly higher: Many analysts believe that
there are between 1 million and 1.3 million immigrants in Greece, making up as
much as 10 percent of the population. (Kasimis, 2012)

We may know more when the results of the 2011 census are fully released.
But even those numbers will be doubtful, since illegal immigrants tend to shun
census-takers. As Kasimis (2012) notes: “The data from the 2011 census […] are
not expected to be detailed nor particularly credible because of the
problematic organization and management of the census.”

The problem here is not just methodological, It’s also definitional. The
term “foreign born” excludes Greek-born children of immigrants. Yet children
tend to identify with their parents’ ethnocultural background, and this is
especially true for Muslim immigrants (Gogonas, 2011).

Here we come to the high estimate of three million, which is denounced
as fear-mongering and yet is probably close to the truth. There might indeed be
that many if we add the children of the foreign-born. Of that total, fewer than
a quarter are easily assimilable, i.e., ethnic Greeks and other Orthodox
Europeans. The rest are mostly Muslim Albanians, Middle Easterners, South
Asians, and Africans.

Conclusion

The past
forty years have drawn Greece into a two-way movement of jobs and workers. On
the one hand, industries have been relocating to countries where labor costs
are cheaper. On the other hand, low-wage labor has been coming in and
displacing Greeks from those jobs that cannot be relocated.

This
two-way movement initially caused wages to rise more slowly than they would
have otherwise. Now, a second phase has begun: a downward leveling of wages and
working conditions.

Of course, this phenomenon isn’t unique to Greece. It’s unique only to the
extent that the Greek people are (1) less able to keep up the fiction of a
First World lifestyle by borrowing money and (2) geographically more exposed to
the forces of globalization. Greece is, so to speak, the canary in the
coalmine.

But there’s
a larger question at stake. Will the Greek people survive? If we accept the
logic of post-nationalism and globalism, there can be only one answer and that
answer is “no.”

Keep the
following points in mind:

-The
Greek people number only eleven million and are on the front of a massive
population expansion that is pushing out of Africa and southwestern Asia.

-Their
fertility rate is only 1.3 children per woman, in contrast to rates up to six
times higher only a short distance to the south.

-The
ideological environment is hostile to any collective defense of the
nation-state. There is a transnational system of defense, NATO, but its aims
reflect the geopolitics of another age.

These are
admittedly current circumstances, and circumstances can change. But change will
have to come soon.

62 comments:

"The EU should "do its best to undermine" the "homogeneity" of its member states, the UN's special representative for migration has said." That UN special representative is Peter Sutherland. The rest of the article is here: EU should undermine national homogeneity

You are talking about the "post-nationalist crisis" of Greece? What about this stupid Englishman? Is he suffering from post-nationalism? Or is he a Marxist? And why-oh-why is this man advocating the undermining of homogeneity for? This man is mad.

Yes, the falling birthrate and 3 million foreigners in a nation of 11 million is disastrious. You're absolutely right, the end of Greece as we know it. The Greeks are so Money Mad, that they will slit their own throat for a buck.

The Root of all evil is the love of money. And to think that the Greek capitalists would rather hire foreigners than their own poor kinsmen is such evil.

Anyways, it seems you have an issue with Greece importing foreign workers to fill its menial jobs, I mean what else were they suppose to do? The menial jobs paid too low a wage for native workers to take them, and the companies had to find SOMEBODY to do the work. And an influx of third world workers arguably does depress the wages in a country's lowest skilled industries, but if they kick all the third world workers out, they'll have to raise wages (by alot) on those menial jobs to get native workers to take them, which might cause inflation, so a country has to choose which policy does the least harm..

FWIW, in 2006, 81% of births in Greece were to women with Greek citizenship according to the Hellenic Statistical Authority (91,000k out of 112,000). Not sure what percentage of those are ethnic Greeks, or how the Hellenic Statistical Authority deals with women with dual citizenship. So I don't know what affect that figure has on the estimates of the immigrant population. Maybe someone who speaks Greek could take a gander, since the whole thing is in Greek. (The English website doesn't work.)

10,000, or a little less than 10%, were to women with Albanian citizenship. No other single country had more than a thousand, though in about five thousand the citizenship of the mother was unaccounted for. The next largest after Albanian was Romanian with 600+.

Yes..I know of Greece's great unemployment woes (over 20 % last time I checked) but you can't blame that on the immigrants dude.. third world immigrants take mainly menial, low-pay jobs when they move to 1st world countries, and the portion of the native population that will be competing with them for jobs is fairly low (due to the much higher education level and older age of the native population)..

***This two-way movement initially caused wages to rise more slowly than they would have otherwise. Now, a second phase has begun: a downward leveling of wages and working conditions.

Of course, this phenomenon isn’t unique to Greece.***

Yes, the UK House of Lords select committee on economic affairs found keeping wages down was a major outcome of immigration. Some higher earners benefitted but the net benefits to the host population were marginal at best. Lower income workers fared poorly. The report also disputes the claim that immigration is required to offset an aging population. The immigrants themselves get old.

"An immigrant community as large as three million people, in a country of eleven million."

And such a high proportion of young males. When it collapses it will be horrific.

."What about this stupid Englishman? Is he suffering from post-nationalism? Or is he a Marxist?"

He's a Goldman Sachs bankster.

."so a country has to choose which policy does the least harm."

They're not choosing the policy that will do the least harm. The most prosperous third of the population are choosing the policy that does them the least (short-term) harm.

The policy which would have done the least harm is to pay more for the menial jobs, let price discovery do it's job thereby creating a demand for capital allocation towards discovering technological solutions for that menial work.

Importing cheap unskilled labour is not only bad long-term in every other way it also acts to kill any incentive for higher prodcuctivity which is the root of real growth.

Immigration is fool's gold.

."81% of births in Greece were to women with Greek citizenship"

I'd expect one side effect of Greek clannishness would be less inter-marriage with the immigrants.

."but you can't blame that on the immigrants dude...and the portion of the native population that will be competing with them for jobs is fairly low"

Yes you can. It's what has led to the incredible levels of youth unemployment in places like Spain.

A lot of the sort of jobs that used to be done by kids on their first and second job are now being done by illegal immigrants.

"They're not choosing the policy that will do the least harm. The most prosperous third of the population are choosing the policy that does them the least (short-term) harm.

The policy which would have done the least harm is to pay more for the menial jobs, let price discovery do it's job thereby creating a demand for capital allocation towards discovering technological solutions for that menial work.

Importing cheap unskilled labour is not only bad long-term in every other way it also acts to kill any incentive for higher prodcuctivity which is the root of real growth.

The problem isn't that Greeks in general have gone money-mad. It's that their elites have converted to post-nationalism, in large part because it serves their perceived self-interest.

This situation isn't limited to Greece, though.

Jprezy,

If there really were a shortage of Greek workers for menial jobs, wages would be rising at a faster rate for those kinds of jobs than for others. That's how a market economy is supposed to work. You know, the law of supply and demand.

But we're actually seeing the reverse. Wages for menial jobs are rising more slowly than wages in other sectors of employment.

The problem isn't that Greek workers are no longer willing to dirty their hands and do hard work. The problem is that they are being replaced by foreign workers who will work for much less, often 50% less. In short, employers are no longer playing against employees on a level playing field. They're rigging the game.

Anon,

Interesting. If non-citizens are responsible for almost 20% of all births, that would suggest a non-citizen population of about 2 million. And that figure would exclude immigrants who already have citizenship. It would also exclude the large number of single males in the immigrant population.

I've read another study (by Gogonas) that says that students of Egyptian origin are the second largest group in Greek schools. But most of their parents came during the 1980s and 1990s, so their parents are probably citizens by now.

Great post, and great way to wrap up your series on Greece. It is indeed a microcosm of the entire Western world.

About immigration, several figures including Dennis Mangan, Steve Sailer, and now yourself have converged on the idea that immigrants depress wages, and are responsible for the growing income inequality in the Western world. This is a discovery much too big to ignore, and suggests that if we want to ensure a strong economic future in the Western world, we seriously need to curtail immigration.

About the issue of differing fertility of native populations vs immigrants, this is in line with what I warn about on my blog, in that while sub-replacement fertility by itself isn't an issue for a nation, it becomes a problem when high-fertility immigrants stream in. Then you end up with population replacement. Your post adds extra urgency to this matter.

Peter, It is conceivable that modifications to the market economy could make it compatible with maintaining European nation states much as they are, but that would mean changes that limit economic output. Making such changes would have to be in either the state's or an important sector of the population's interest.

No state will drop out of the system to be made weaker relative to its rivals. The nation may not be made stronger by the current system, but the state is: wealth is power.

So the native population, or a part of it, will have to challenge post nationalism. But the sector of the population which is hurt by the immigration is redundant now, even as cannon fodder.

The current crisis was implicit in the design of the eurozone; it's a banker's ramp that leaves no way out but political union.

Seems UK Labour Party leader Ed Milliband has realised the downside of his party's immigration policies.

"So I am going to be true to my family’s story and to that of our country by recognising that Britain has benefited from immigration — economically, socially and culturally.

But I also have to be true to the many people I have met who worry about immigration and feel let down by politics on this issue. So we need a grown-up debate which begins with an honest assessment of what has happened.

For too long we assumed those who worried about immigration were stuck in the past — unrealistic about how things could be different, even prejudiced.

Britain was experiencing the largest peacetime migration in recent history partly because of global factors like the lower cost of travel but also because the last Labour government severely underestimated the numbers who would come here when the EU expanded.

We were too dazzled by globalisation’s impact on growth and too sanguine about its price. We lost sight of who was benefiting and the people being squeezed in the middle who were losing out. And, to them, Labour was too quick to say: “Like it or lump it.”

But they were ahead of us in seeing some of the costs of migration as a whole. Rapid changes in population led to pressures on scarce resources such as housing and schools. Some areas were not equipped to cope in the short-term and it brought to the fore questions about entitlements.

There were also problems with the pace of change in some communities...

But an effective immigration policy must also reform how our economy works so that it works for all working people in Britain. Although immigration has benefited our economy overall, there have been costs as well as benefits. And where those costs and benefits fall is related to class.

Those people getting a conservatory built for their home were probably better off because of immigration. But many working in food-processing, hospitality or construction — maybe even building conservatories — were probably worse off because of immigration.

Mr. Frost -- thank you very much for these articles on Greece. They're lucid, informative, and worth reading more than once. What should Greece do to rescue itself? The answer reminds me of what people in my ancestral homeland, Ireland, are said to say when asked for directions: "Sure, and I wouldn't start from here..."

Politicians sound like they are promising a change, but it never comes to anything, it's just PR. Way back in 1970 British opposition Conservative leader Edward Heath was dubbed 'Selsdon Man' for his supposedly atavistic free market economy and immigration policies. When he got into power he allowed a massive increase in immigration. National governments can't make good on such rhetoric, even if they wanted to. Cameron thinks Turkey will converge with the UK in a few years so there will be no lmmigration from Turkey when gets EU membership like he wants it to. Rely on it, there are far more immigrants in Britain than the government knows or wants to know.

Once again, Peter, you've put together an excellent analysis of the problems bedeviling Greece; it is obvious that the German accusation of Greeks living the life of luxury through excessive borrowing doesn't hit the nail on the head. Instead, Greece has been trying to maintain an EU standard of living with a population that's increasingly Third World. In effect, the Germans aren't being asked to subsidize lazy Greeks; they are being asked to indirectly subsidize poor Third World immigrants.

Yet I think you've erred slightly in attributing much of the error to post-nationalism. I agree with you that the core problem arises from excessive immigration, but the driving force here is economics, not post-nationalism. Many of the people hiring illegal immigrants instead of Greeks are small businessmen rather than the elite. A thousand-employee business is a fatter target for immigration officials than a little 5-worker construction contractor, so has to be more careful. We've seen much the same thing here in the USA: most illegal immigrants are hired by small-time operators on a short-term basis; that's what keeps them under the radar.

Those small-time operators aren't cigar-puffing elitists; they're middle class, and I doubt that they even know the difference between nationalism and post-nationalism. The motivating force is the invisible hand grabbing them by the throat.

I think that the lesson here is is not a warning against post-nationalism; the moral of this Greek tragedy is that immigration must be restrained in proportion to the workforce. I think that immigration offers benefits to any society: it injects new blood, new ideas, and above all more grit to a culture. Immigrants are the overachievers who provide a continuing kick in the butt for the lazier members of society.

The problem, then, is to determine the ideal fraction of the population that is immigrant. It's obvious from this tale that 10% is too high in Greece, and my rough hunch is that the ideal figure (while varying from culture to culture) is on the order of 1%. It would be fascinating to compile a list of countries with their fractional immigrant populations and see how much social stress they're undergoing as a consequence.

So immigrants are 'new blood' by definition. Presumably a native Greek who went to another country would thereby become 'new' blood, but if he stayed in Greece he would remain 'old blood', and not so valuable.

Sean, the value of new blood culturally is precisely the same as the value of new genes to a population: it expands the meme pool. For millenia, humans have practised a variety of traditions to insure that local populations do not become inbred. In modern cultures in which ideas are every bit as important to cultural success, the importation of new cultural memes is a very healthy practice.

People of European background are expensive and cause too many "problems" like forming unions and wanting better work conditions. European and Jewish business leaders are working hard to eliminate the European population off the face of the planet by importing non-Europeans who breed like crazy and create worse enviroments, environments that European people move away from. Not only is the very existence of European people and our way of life at stake, but so is our history. Non-Europeans don't have the desire or capability to maintain the vast cultural legacy of European people.

Business leaders like to push these false ideas that there are labor shortages. There are no labor shortages. Only a few years ago all the low paying jobs were done by Greeks. Never before in history has the Greek population reached 10 million. It's simply about greed. Business leaders want to keep wages down so they can take more of it.

I think that the lesson here is is not a warning against post-nationalism; the moral of this Greek tragedy is that immigration must be restrained in proportion to the workforce. I think that immigration offers benefits to any society: it injects new blood, new ideas, and above all more grit to a culture."

Blood AND grit? Indeed, more grit than blood? Are you sure that's healthy? Are you sure you're not a liberal? They don't think before they write either.

"Immigrants are the overachievers who provide a continuing kick in the butt for the lazier members of society.

I won't speculate on your background -- in the UK, thanks to our thought-crime laws, such speculation is dangerous: I could literally go to prison for expressing an opinion. Your windy rhetoric is truer than you realize (or perhaps not): immigrants are certainly over-achievers in lots of ways. I won't give any specific examples of what they over-achieve in, again because of those thought-crime laws. And why is the UK blessed with the laws? To paraphrase your hot air: "Immigrants are the overachievers who provide a continuing kick in the butt for crime-thinkers."

...the importation of new cultural memes is a very healthy practice.

Free speech and free enquiry are two indigenous "memes" that are now dying in the west, thanks to the importation of certain other "memes". Is that an example of what you mean by "very healthy"? You're either a half-wit drunk on the sound of his own rhetoric or... something I can't suggest.

According to Heather Norton's data, ancestral Europeans remained dark-skinned long after their arrival in Europe some 35,000 years ago. So the original vitamin-D hypothesis doesn't explain why Europeans became white-skinned.

The "new" vitamin-D hypothesis posits that the shift from hunting and gathering to farming created a greater need for vitamin D. The problem with this explanation, however, is that some European peoples, notably the Finns and Baltic populations, adopted farming very recently, almost at the dawn of history. Yet they're very pale-skinned.

Jayman,

The word "discovery" may be a bit of an overstatement. A lot of economists have been saying the same thing, but they don't get positions in corporate-funded think tanks. And increasingly its becoming harder for them to get positions in academica. Wonder why.

Sean,

Economic output is going to be limited anyway, by a sharp rise in most commodity prices. So we will all have to get used to an economy that grows more slowly. The main problem will be the large rentier class among us whose lifestyle depends on abnormally high rates of growth. They're the ones who are pushing growth at all costs.

Anon,

It's not religion per se that supports language and cultural maintenance. It's the fact of having a religion that differs from that of the host society.

Kiwiguy,

Talk is cheap. And it's easy to talk when one's party is no longer in power.

Vradix,

There's no easy way out. But the status quo would be even worse. Ideally, the EU should dismantle itself in an orderly manner, but I don't see that happening. As for Greece, it should leave the Euro zone and disown its debt. But the task of rebuilding the Greek economy will not be easy.

Chris,

The dominant ideology is a reflection of the dominant groups in a society. The latter have more access to the production and dissemination of ideas. They can also define the limits of acceptable discouse.

The dominant ideology thus strengthens the position of the dominant groups. So there is a feedback loop of sorts, i.e., a vicious circle.

Without post-nationalism, the current immigration laws in Greece would be not only more stringent but also more thoroughly enforced. Ideology provides "air cover" for what is happening on the ground.

Your remarks about illegal immigration in the U.S. would have been true about 20 years ago. Today, the law is no longer being enforced in many states, and it's quite common for big American companies to have thousands of illegal immigrants on their payrolls.

"the Germans aren't being asked to subsidize lazy Greeks; they are being asked to indirectly subsidize poor Third World immigrants"

Not quite. They're being asked to subsidize the working class of a country that has been impoverished by globalization (outsourcing of jobs and insourcing of cheaper labor). This cannot be done indefinitely, of course.

I think we've passed the point where post-nationalism can still be made to work. As an ideology and as an economic system, it has become too disconnected from reality. A correction is in order.

> White skin has got nothing to do with Vitamin D. The proof of that is the Institute Of Medicine's report that found 20ng/ml is sufficient for all health outcomes, and that more may be harmful.

Health outcomes are reckoned only in terms of normality and abnormality ; when it comes to fitness, supra-normality may be quite relevant. The ability to run a 5:00 mile may be one determinant of fitness, whereas that plays no part in adjudging someone medically healthy. Likewise the ability to act supercilious and bemused toward women is critical for fitness, but we would hardly assess someone as unhealthy just because he stands at the 30th percentile for such abilities.

All I can say is the Ashkenazim sure were in a hurry to 'pale up' when they got to Northern Europe. It's got to be something.

> And raising your vitamin D levels over 20ng/ml is not a good idea. Relation Between Serum 25-Hydroxyvitamin D and C-Reactive Protein in Asymptomatic Adults (From the Continuous National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2001 to 2006) "25(OH)D at a level ≥21 ng/ml is associated with an increase in serum CRP". [IE it raises a marker for inflammation]

I don't know about premodern farmers, but foragers have essentially no circulatory disease. In the absence of circ disease, I'm not sure what standard, if any, we have for considering 'high' levels of CRP to be too high. Maybe those levels have been harmless (or beneficial) in foragers, and perhaps also (for all I know, I mean) in premodern farmers.

Your advice on what 25(OH)D levels are desirable might be good for modern Westerners, or perhaps not (I have no opinion) -- but even if it is good for us, I would hesitate to strongly believe on that basis alone that it would also be good and true for the pre-modern situation.

> It also makes you more likely to die.A Reverse J-Shaped Association of All-Cause Mortality with Serum 25-Hydroxyvitamin D in General Practice, the CopD Study ""In this study from the general practice sector, a reverse J-shaped relation between the serum level of 25(OH)D and all-cause mortality was observed, indicating not only a lower limit but also an upper limit. The lowest mortality risk was at 50–60 nmol/liter" (X 0.4 to convert nmol/L to ng/ml). So 50nmol/L is 20ng/ml.

This is certainly suggestive, but again I'm not sure it can fully illuminate for us what the pre-modern situation was. (There's also the issue of the small to moderate inequivalency between mortality/survival and fitness.) I'm not saying this sheds no light at all on what the premodern situation is likely to have been -- only it doesn't fully seal the deal, for me personally.

Peter, rentiers are hooked on offshore capital, which might continue to supply abnormally high growth even with high commodity prices; Warren Buffet invested in an Chinese electric car business.

Japanese economic success despite lacking cheap raw materials shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone but it did. Japan was systematically underestimated, despite their success (Japs lacked resources, but were smart in WW2, hit the 'read more' links Here). Then the US army got roughly handled in Korea by a Chinese army than lacked air support or heavy weapons. Then the US went Vietnam and were surprised to lose. Western naysayers have an incredible 100% record about east Asian countries. 100% wrong.

Peter, the evidence with regard to large-scale hiring of illegal immigrants by larger corporations is difficult to interpret. On the one hand, there's plenty of evidence of corporations being caught and fined for it:

Thus, there's plenty of evidence that the Feds are cracking down on such activity. But does this indicate increased enforcement or increased activity? My overall impression is that the agricultural sector employs huge numbers of illegal immigrants, but in other sectors of the economy, the Feds are making it too expensive to hire illegal immigrants. Certainly the increased documentation requirements are making it easier for the Feds to catch such employment.

I think we've passed the point where post-nationalism can still be made to work. As an ideology and as an economic system, it has become too disconnected from reality. A correction is in order.

That depends on what you mean by "post-nationalism"; after all, that's a really vague term when it comes to policy. Certainly there are lots of businesses who translate "post-nationalism" to "free trade", and there's oodles of evidence that free trade has been vastly beneficial to humanity. If, on the other hand, your notion of post-nationalism concerns immigration, then we get into nastier problems. There's no question that Greece permitted too much immigration. But again, the question is not whether immigration should be permitted, but how much immigration is ideal.

Perhaps focusing our attention on specific policies rather than ill-defined concepts will be more productive when considering policy issues. Surely the references to "socialism" in the American health care debate makes clear just how confusing such practices can be.

There's no easy way out. But the status quo would be even worse. Ideally, the EU should dismantle itself in an orderly manner, but I don't see that happening. As for Greece, it should leave the Euro zone and disown its debt. But the task of rebuilding the Greek economy will not be easy.

I hope it's not Sisyphean. I expect martial law in Greece before long, with other Mediterranean states perhaps to follow. Not good, and I don't think it will end with martial law. I wouldn't rule it out in the UK either. I remember a few years back supporting free speech and opposing immigration in arguments with liberals. They used to call me a fascist. I told them that no-one was working harder to lay the foundations of fascism than they were. Liberals still won't understand what I meant, but it may sink in before long, among the less narcissistic and more realistic members of the "community".

Chris C. summarized:

But again, the question is not whether immigration should be permitted, but how much immigration is ideal.

When someone says something like that, there are three possibilities:

1. He's an idiot.2. He's turned economics, sociology, psychology, etc into exact sciences of analysis, prediction, and control.3. He's spinning a line for reasons of his own.

In your case, I think it's 1. If I'm wrong and it's 2, might I be the first to congratulate you on your forthcoming Nobels, World Presidency, Pulitzer, etc? If it's 3, I'll say no more. After all, I live in neo-Stalinist New Britain, full of over-achievers ever ready to kick the butts of the less ideologically obedient members of society.

And speaking of over-achievers and butt-kicking... I'm still waiting for an explanation of how this is "very healthy":

The replacement in the UK of indigenous "memes" like free speech with imported new "memes" like "I disagree with with what you say, and you will go to jail for saying it."

I doubt the explanation will ever arrive, but I'll take this back anyway: "a half-wit drunk on the sound of his own rhetoric." You are a half-wit, but it's not your own rhetoric you're drunk on. You reek of neo-cognac or bRandy or some other crypto-Marxist / libertarian rot-gut. Memetic cirrhosis must be another example of what you mean by "very healthy".

Vox Day over at his site posted this from Karl Marx:"If the free-traders cannot understand how one nation can grow rich at the expense of another, we need not wonder, since these same gentlemen also refuse to understand how within one country one class can enrich itself at the expense of another.... But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade." - On the Question of Free Trade, Karl Marx, 1848

"Free Trade hastens the social revolution". This has nothing to do with "post-nationalism" but with accomplishing Jewish goals of a deracinated world. This plan is going well. Free Trade is doing what it was planned to do. Greece is a bloody mess.

Second, Prof. Frost, you talk of "The Narrative". Well what drives "The Narrative"?

The Holocaust. It is not that nationalism has been discredited, is that people with an agenda ascribe the Holocaust to race when if you read Hitler's second book it was an act of revenge.

It is the Holocaust itself and the "guilt trip" imposed on Europe by Jews especially Theodore Adorno and Horkeimer who say its "Europe's fault". These Marxist Jews, who belong to International Socialism, don't recognize that the rise of National Socialism is due to International Socialism an Enlightenment movement that had nothing to do with standard traditional European culture or civilization. Here are Marxists that blame something entirely that has no reference to the Holocaust. I like how Marxists are so blind to their own agenda or are they really that blind and ignorant of the goals of their own ideology?

All of Europe, just not Greece, are committing suicide for the sake of the guilt of the Holocaust. No one dares be nationalistic due to the Jewish manufactured Narrative! And as you can see Slobadan Milosevic in America was compared to Hitler and the Golden Dawn party is considered neo-nazi. These two references are made soley because of their connection to the Holocaust making my point. The Holocaust drives The Narrative.

And then to Greeks as "money-mad", Taki Theodoracopulos over at Taki Mag has written an essay called The Double-Born Soul of Greece. He's Greek and understands his kinsmen very well. He writes: "The highly individualistic Greek is too self-seeking to submit easily to others’ dictates. His unruliness makes for a bad citizen but has helped him survive centuries of oppression and to rise above adversity, economic or otherwise."

The individual Greek is """"too self-seeking"""". That is what I meant by money-mad. There are none of the virtues that existed in Classical Greece in Modern Greece. I am a member to a Greek nationalist group and at one gathering the president of the Greek group stood up and delivered a speech. In it, he tasked all young Greeks to become lawyers! Why? lawyers make money. tons of money!

I almost fell out of my seat in disgust.

The Modern Greek is into self-aggrandizement. They are very very vain people who are into the gimmicks of the modern age and into the social pecking order of materialism. Taki has it right: ""The highly individualistic Greek is too self-seeking..." I have witnessed it in Greece and here in America.

400 years of Turkish occupation has destroyed Greek character and the majority Ionian character doesn't help matters much either.

Further backing of my case is the so-called Italian Mafia. They are parasites living off the back of the bourgeouis.

Where does the Mafia come from?

Sicily and the Heel and Toe of Italy. Sicily is a Doric Island. Many colonies in Tarentum and in Sicily proper were Doric! The Mafia, even though they speak Italian, are genetically Doric Greeks. In the Mafia, you see this self-aggrandizement. When the Doric character is no longer tied to its classical heritage, their character deteriorates. Plato said as much. The Cretans became the pirates of the Mediterrianum. Noble character turns into its opposite.

The Greeks are too self-seeking to form a virtuous community. It is basically all about Virtue and its lack. It has nothing to do with "post-nationalism". Taki is right. "Thief knows Thief" is the natural law.

Chris, you're looking at issues from the standpoint of what is best for humanity 'overall'. That is a frame of reference which privileges the interests of non Western peoples, but may have little to with the motives behind post nationalism.

As has been pointed out the adverse impact of current outsourcing and immigration policies in Greece is not felt by those running the show. While there is indeed a 'greatest good of the greatest number' case for globalization, the Western elites (who are agreeing to everything on behalf of their nations) are having their institutional interests 'most peculiarly attended to' by the policy. That is why there is no way out.

I was checking out your webpage and on your photos page there's a picture of you in a military helmet at the computer. It's captioned "Age 31 Working on my first big hit, Eastern Front (1941) for the Atari."

I think that picture became an internet meme. I think I've seen it before on the internet as a meme.

Sean, I agree that free trade has different effects on different people. The single biggest effect on Western nations is the competition for unschooled labor. Nowadays an unschooled Western laborer is in direct competition with unschooled Asian workers working at a fraction of the wages the Westerner employs. Many such Westerners lose their jobs and those that don't suffer a reduction in pay.

No doubt about it, that's bad. This has been coming for years and I have little sympathy for young Western laborers who did not pursue their education; they had plenty of warning and chose a path that denies them a middle-class lifestyle. Certainly we must do everything possible to make continuing education easy and cheap for them. The older workers definitely have my sympathy; all in all, I'd guess that welfare to support them will amount to much less than the benefits we all enjoy from free trade.

I don't think it works to characterize this as a battle between classes; the primary beneficiaries of reduced prices of manufactured goods are the Walmart-shopping middle classes. Stockholders of multinationals derive little benefit because they're still in competition with other enterprises. If their costs go down, so do everybody else's, and their prices must come down or they lose market share. Hence, they don't get much opportunity for profit-taking because of free trade policies.

I would certainly like to hear exactly what differential benefits the "elite" enjoy because of free trade.

"This has been coming for years and I have little sympathy for young Western laborers who did not pursue their education"

Education doesn't do people any good if they don't have the brains to actually learn something from it. There are 150+ million Americans who are below average intelligence. Education is a dead end street for many of them. And they aren't going anywhere.

Having done some teaching, I disagree with your pessimistic assessment of the benefits of education for below-average intelligences. I believe that 98% of the American public could benefit from having a high school diploma, and 90% could benefit from a 2-year college degree.

Of course, this is an entirely subjective assessment; I'm sure that there's solid data on the matter, but I'm too lazy to dig it up. But in any case, the educational standards of the American public could easily be raised. Is there any reason why any person (other than very low IQs) should not have a high school diploma?

I would certainly like to hear exactly what differential benefits the "elite" enjoy because of free trade.

Most people, and perhaps especially the types that aspire to be or are "elites", are motivated by social status. Social status is a zero-sum game. In a zero-sum game, what matters is proportion. How much you have relative to others. The elites have gained relatively much more from free trade.

They have? And exactly how has that happened? Has the value of their stock grown BECAUSE they face stiffer competition from foreign companies? And does any such growth exceed in value the ability of the middle class to purchase more manufactured goods for the same incomes?

I suspect that, if you replace speculation with analysis of costs and benefits, you'll come to a different conclusion than the one you're espousing now.

Non sequitur. Yes, the Gini Index for most Western nations -- especially the USA -- has increased over the last 30 years. What you haven't shown is any causal relationship between free trade and the increase in Gini Index. Moreover, that increase predates the rapid increase in free trade, and is more readily assigned to, among other factors, the increasing political strength of the wealthy. The changes in the tax structure are directly responsible for some of the increase in Gini Index -- and those changes are due to politics, not free trade.

Again I ask, how has free trade been more beneficial to the wealthy than to the middle classes?

Chris, You seem to think we are still in the days when Henry Ford paid his workers high wages and they bought his products, but just on a global scale. In the current system the best returns are for off-shored capital. Foreign companies which produce cheap products are generating profit for people like Romney. He made big bucks in outsourcing.

And the middle class does not get left with the 'same income' seeing as how their well paying jobs are being outsourced away. The jobs not being replaced by new industries. You could fit all the employees of Google, Microsoft and Amazon into Yankee stadium.

Many immigrants especially second generation ones, are not satisfied with unskilled work. The native middle class is going to be shrunk.

Elites are not going to halt a process that is in their own interest though they'll say their motives are pure; there is such a thing as cognitive dissonance.

Sean, it's true that there's a transition period when one domestic company gains a competitive advantage over another by outsourcing. For much of the economy, however, that transition period is ending. The wealth transfer during this period is not so much from the middle class to the wealthy as from the slow-to-outsource to the fast-to-outsource. Once the transition is complete, there's no benefit whatsoever to the wealthy, while there's a continuing benefit to consumers.

This is no different from any other improvement in productivity. When we started using personal computers in businesses, the companies that were faster to make the transition successfully enjoyed a competitive advantage over those that were slow. There were also jobs lost. But the permanent result was an increase in productivity that benefited everybody. Would you have discouraged the use of personal computers in business in order to protect the jobs of people who couldn't use computers?

Yes, during the transition, the middle class loses jobs, but it also gains cheaper products. Suppose that, due to outsourcing, 300 million American consumers enjoy net savings in their purchases of $100 each per year; that's a total benefit of $30 billion. If that outsourcing costs the jobs of 100,000 low-skill workers, each earning $30K/year, that represents a loss of $3 billion. In other words, the outsourcing made the American people $27 billion richer. And you think this is bad?!?!?

I suggest that you're falling prey to a common mistake in economics: paying heed to the big changes on one small group while ignoring the many small changes for the overall population. There's a lot of economic injustice perpetrated in this manner.

For example, factory owners face high costs installing pollution abatement equipment, so they lobby Congress to weaken pollution control regulations. That saves them lots of money. But the increased pollution thereby generated imposes much higher overall costs on the general population. Since each member of the public suffers only a small cost, it's not politically viable for them to oppose the industrial lobbyists. This transfers wealth from the general population to the factory owners.

Please don't think of the situation as evil moustache-twiddling plutocrats out to destroy honest hard-working American workers. That kind of good-versus-evil thinking never yields solutions. Instead, think of everybody as sharks in the sea, each one mindlessly pursuing its own interests. The middle class would just as readily screw the wealthy if they could. It is not their innate virtue that prevents this, it is their political impotence.

In any event, free trade is not the cause of their wretched situation; a slanted political system is the better explanation. Free trade provides the general population -- both humanity's in general AND Americans in particular -- with greater prosperity.

"There were also jobs lost. But the permanent result was an increase in productivity"

The argument has nothing to do with the case. Outsourced jobs are outsourced so they can be done in foreign countries with cheap foreign labor. There is no gain in the productivity of domestic workers, they are just out of a job.

Nor is importing of cheap labor an incentive to improve the productivity of the domestic workforce, quite the opposite.

Sean, you're interpreting the term "productivity" to apply only to "labor productivity": the value of the output of one hour of average labor. I'm referring to the broadest form of productivity: the overall productivity of the economy, as expressed in GDP per capita. Free trade has most certainly increased GDP per capita.

The causal mechanism is obvious. If you're an employer and you get access to cheaper labor, your labor costs go down and your profits go up. Your former employees get fired and become unemployed or find lower wage work, or if they stay on they get paid at the lower wage.

Sean, I'm not defending outsourcing in isolation; I see it as only one element of free trade, and I see free trade as a whole as beneficial to society.

Yes, outsourcers benefit from outsourcing. There are three basic effects:

1. The outsourcer makes greater profits from lowered labor costs. This is a temporary benefit; as competition starts to bite, the outsourcer is forced to pass the lower costs on to consumers, reducing his profit margin to normal levels.

2. The domestic workers lose their jobs.

3. The outsourcer makes a small increase in long-term profits due to higher sales of his now-cheaper product.

So yes, outsourcing alone results in greater benefits for the factory owners than to the middle class. However, outsourcing doesn't exist in a vacuum; it is part and parcel of greater free trade, and that free trade brings benefits to all consumers that are much greater than the losses to workers.

You're absolutely right that cheap immigrant labor reduces incentives for employers to increase expenditures to increase net labor productivity. That's a great argument for holding immigration to levels that the economy can support.

Anonymous affirms that outsourcing is of greater benefit to employers than to employed. I have already declared my agreement with this; but calculating outsourcing without considering the benefits of free trade is an inherently lopsided calculation; you can't have outsourcing without free trade. And if you consider both the costs and benefits of free trade, you discover that the net result is positive.

Since you think I'm an idiot, my explanation would surely be unsatisfactory, wouldn't it? ;-)

Unsatisfactory to you, not to me, which is why you're not supplying it. As I predicted. What should I call someone who makes dogmatic statements that they can't back up? Intelligent? "Immigration's great! But all sensible people agree that it has to be managed to fine-tune its benefits!" The Guardian peddles that line too. It doesn't smell any better coming from an American who isn't, I assume, much of a Guardian fan. But who has, I also assume, come across Lenin's notion of the "useful idiot". If you've not come across it and want to see one, just find a reflective surface.

Anyway, my bet is that my wait will continue. You can't and won't provide an explanation.

No doubt about it, that's bad. This has been coming for years and I have little sympathy for young Western laborers who did not pursue their education; they had plenty of warning and chose a path that denies them a middle-class lifestyle.

A Guardian line again. "The lower orders? Let them eat cake!" Tho' the Guardian only advocates that for the white lower orders. I assume you're a bit more "inclusive".

No need to tell me if I'm wrong. But I would like to see that explanation. One, two, three...

Welcome to my blog! For the most part, this page will be an extension of my website, with comments relating to my research. But it will also branch out into more general discussions of human evolution.